


Will

by ftld



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Chapter 134/135 Spoilers, Character Study, Gen, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 07:34:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28347738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftld/pseuds/ftld
Summary: Armin has known how this will end for a while now.
Kudos: 15





	Will

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case you missed the tag: Here be manga spoilers. Seriously huge spoilers. Specifically from chapters 134/135.
> 
> I wrote this prompt to myself while ago because I thought I saw something getting set up, so this is just a little bit of speculation about where certain things are going.
> 
> So... here we are.
> 
> Really I'm just trying to make this A/N take up space in case you somehow missed that there are spoilers and had to click out real quick.
> 
> Last chance.
> 
> Spoilers.
> 
> ;-)

It smells like death. The endless rows of colossal titans razing the earth kick up a stench of blood and grit that permeates the air. Indescribable chaos rages below; a tense hum assaults the senses and leaves Armin’s teeth clenched.  
  
Onyankopon has them on a collision course. The plane is aimed straight at one of the bleached spines slicing through the view out the open side door. Shrapnel rains from the burning vessels above as the Beast Titan rampages. Little, glowing embers snuff out as they tumble beneath the Founding Titan’s arching ribs. From the angle of their approach, Armin can barely make out a pelvis and legs dangling from the base of the monstrosity’s spine, comically small in comparison to the rest of its body. It is an ominous parallel that Armin can’t help but follow to its natural conclusion.  
  
Where is Eren? Is he cocooned beneath the ribs, or perhaps dangling in front with that same careless sway as the legs, reminiscent of a corpse hanging from a noose?  
  
The plane descends. Pressure builds in Armin’s skull until everything sounds like he’s underwater. There’s no sensation of a last rally, no faint glimmer of hope clinging to life—only this curious sense of foreboding that has Armin trussed up and helpless. This course laid before them is the culmination of all the lies they were told as children come full-circle with bruising irony. It’s true now, isn’t it? Their false history of near-extinction is being legitimized right before their eyes.  
  
Leaning out the open side of the plane as they whip through the sky at breakneck speed, Armin’s toes wriggle in his boots. They’re too high to see the ground through the dirty fog—a good thing, perhaps, because while Armin’s resolve is tempered steel he’s not sure how Jean and Connie can hold up against the sight of thousands of innocent men, women, and children caught under this stampede. Things of this nature tear them apart more than the others. Armin wishes his heart still bled like that, but they’ve all had their defining moments and his was in the company of a shotgun.  
  
An ache spreads through his fingers, creeps up his arms, seeps into his hollow heart. It’s not far to fall; they’ll be upon Zeke before they know it.  
  
Smoke and iron fill his lungs.  
  
The cold weight of his gear settles in his palms.  
  
Armin jumps.  
  
Plunging through the air in a desperate, spread-eagled dive is majestic for thirty empty seconds before Armin has to shoot for the closest spine. Hook after hook embed in a long, spaced-out column down the tower of bone as the rest of the scouts follow suit. Chunks blast away under the force, crumbling in little avalanches to join the mayhem below. One at a time they break off from their shared landing point to spread out for a better view of the battlefield.  
  
They’re here to talk. Armin refuses to consider any other course of action until that preliminary measure fails. He’s spent days mulling over word choices, has tweaked his speech to get it concise and impactful. A list of metaphors and memories are tucked away, anything he can use to sway Eren emotionally, get just one crack to appear in his unshakable will. Realistically, it won’t change anything but Armin refuses to listen to reason until he has to. The desperate clawing in his chest will go unheeded until then. Only after Armin looks Eren in the eye will he acknowledge the truth.  
  
Armin has known how this will end for a while now.  
  
A sickening crunch echoes as Reiner collides with the ghastly Beast Titan—it does not roar or snarl, not a sound comes from it after the impact of Reiner’s armor versus flesh and bone. There is no reaction to Captain Levi, no move to defend itself or throw Reiner away. Its focus remains uninterrupted on the flaming debris raining from the sky. Another puppet.  
_  
__Interesting_ , Armin’s mind supplies for a split-second before terror sets in at the implication. This is a pale imitation of Zeke’s titan, a horrifying preview of what’s to come. If Eren can manifest another shifter’s titan like this—  
  
Is Zeke dead? Does Eren no longer need him to sustain the rumbling? Is there no end to what he can do now?  
  
A whirring sounds, then another as Mikasa and Levi lose patience, followed quickly by the rest. They’re angling to back up Reiner, but Armin splits from the group to launch himself into a high arc, hoping to assess what he can of Eren’s condition.  
  
Armin had supposed right about the head: the nape of the Founding Titan tapers off into a limp, skeletal torso that hangs like a marionette. The head looks mostly intact, it’s easy to assume Eren is in it somewhere—but Armin can’t shake the feeling that it’s too crude an answer to a question more complicated than he understands.  
  
“What about you is free?” Armin asks the wind cutting his cheeks. The words float away, left behind as he flies toward another anchor point, this one lower, closer to the others. Then sadder, reminiscent of all the times he’s had to slice through skin and muscle, he whispers, “You can answer me once we drag you out of there.”  
  
Eren’s concept of freedom has always abstract. He clings to it like a birthright, violently lashes out at any perceived interference. To Eren, even this abomination is freedom. These are his terms. This is his answer.  
  
None of this is about Eren’s freedom, not anymore. This is about Armin and Mikasa, and the rest of what remains of their cadet corp. It’s about protecting Historia and her baby. About all those other countless Eldian children shackled with this horrible fate from birth. The rumbling is punishment of the world en masse for denying Eldians their right to a peaceful life, for being complicit in locking them away behind walls and in ghettos with nothing but lies to lull them into complacency.  
  
Eren and Armin dreamed together of a wide, open wilderness to explore. They believed their whole lives that the only thing standing in their way was titans. Reality was devastating.  
  
Armin makes a rapid descent into the madness below. His breath escapes in one burst as his boots find purchase on the titan’s back and his hooks retract into the gear at his hips. Further down the ridge formed by a knobby row of vertebrae, Reiner strangles the figure masquerading as Zeke’s titan.  
  
A stillness pulses in the air. Armin steadies himself and thinks about shattering bones, the nature of explosives, and the morality of abusing every side of the conflict for his own hopes and sense of justice. He wonders when that part of him that isn’t sure he disagrees with Eren’s philosophy got so coherent.  
  
It happens in the blink of an eye: a long, pointed tongue winds through Armin’s legs before he notices the titan approach. Fright grips his muscles as it coils around his body, snakes its way around his waist, up his chest, and presses its way between his teeth. A vile, cloying taste burns Armin’s mouth and throat, and an awful wetness seeps into his clothes.  
  
Armin never sees these simpler things coming. He always focuses on some larger picture, winds up wrong-footed and in need of rescue, and isn’t this so fitting? Left behind, again. Helpless, again. Vision blurred with darkness encroaching from all sides, he tries to blink away the tears welling up from the unbelievable pressure gripping his forehead. A desperate inhale crushes Armin’s ribs between his lungs and the titan’s tongue, and it’s stiff but he can still breathe—  
  
This is wrong.  
  
Sanity is lost as a titan; every moment feels heavy and urgent in an uncomfortable way. Even for a shifter it’s difficult to stay rational, so what of these titans roaming the Founder’s back? They shouldn’t have such intent.  
  
Struggling is senseless; fighting only wastes his strength. Armin has to think about this logically. Eren is in control here and if he meant to kill Armin, he’d be dead by now—chomped in half, the Colossal Titan bleeding from his spine.  
  
_What would happen?_ It’s a fleeting thought, an errant curiosity. What would happen if Eren devoured them all? After finishing with Armin, Reiner, and Pieck, would he turn around and head for Annie? For Falco? Eren had seemed genuine enough when he insisted he’d allow them to fight if that was their wish—but those were words from the mouth of a shadow and Armin needs to look Eren in the eye to know the truth.  
  
He has to keep it together. There’s no immediate danger if his assumptions are correct and it doesn’t matter that he’s restrained and silenced when he doesn’t have the right words yet, won’t know them until the eleventh hour. It’s a weakness, always has been. Uncertainty erodes logic until there’s nothing but Armin staring down certain destruction with only a political gamble, or an emotional plea, or that heavy, cold shotgun shaking in his hands.  
  
The constriction around his chest battles another slow, firm breath that aches. Armin blinks the haze from his vision.  
  
There is a girl. She stands with one hand resting on a protruding spike, her dirty white dress fluttering around her legs in the wind. Armin feels her down to his bones; she sings in his blood.  
  
Ymir is different than before. In that mystical desert she and Eren were nothing but projections: unspeaking, unseeing. They were husks stood beneath a radiant column of light branching into the shape of an ancient tree, stars scattered across an emptiness vast as the ocean. The sight was beautiful and terrifying, like any second Armin could be sucked into that glittering void and lost forever.  
  
That Ymir has manifested here is confirmation: Eren’s unbreakable conviction has found common ground with Ymir’s will. They are equal and complicit.  
  
Thick, wet, and hot, the tongue tightens around Armin’s body, wriggles over him like an overexcited worm as Ymir watches, silent and motionless except for the movement of her dress. Spots explode in his vision: stars, like the ones scattered across the black void surrounding a boundless desert of white sand.  
  
The tongue chokes him as if to murmur, ‘ _Let_ _’s talk.’_  
  
Long, shallow breaths in counts of five in, five out. Calm. Searching for the right words. Ymir’s gaze holds steady as the titan pulls him into its mouth and the world goes dark.  
  
Ever since that day in Shiganshina, Bertolt has haunted Armin. It’s nothing more than a manifestation of guilt, Armin knows this, but that doesn’t make it any less effective. Armin squeezes his eyes shut in the dark of the titan’s mouth and a phantom of Bertolt looms, a tear streaming down one cheek, a heavy sense of loss and heartbreak rebounding between them. This one death weighs so heavy, was so far-reaching and catastrophic. If Armin had been stronger, more decisive…  
  
_‘Let’s talk.’_ Ymir croons through the rancid meat burrowing further into his mouth, forcing his jaw to its limit. There is a connection between them. The feel of her surges through his whole body—can she feel him back?  
  
Armin knows how this will end but he can’t stop fighting. He won’t. One last chance to end this before it’s well and truly over is all he wants.  
  
‘ _Yes, Ymir. Let_ _’s talk.’_

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/frthelongestday)


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